I am extremely excited that I have won support in my appeal to the Ghana Football Association to check the activities of the so called local football managers who are pushing youngsters abroad with very little guidance that invariably destroys their future career.

Siegfried Sanzio Bahner, an accomplished coach who once had a stint with premier division clubs, King Faisal and Accra Hearts of Oak, has endorsed my often repeated assertion that most of the players we rush abroad have flopped at the numerous trials they have undertaken because they had no idea of the cultural background of the foreign country and this affects their psyche and hence their failure.

Bahner, who is now general manager of Red Bull Soccer Academy at Sogakope in the Volta Region, agrees with me that the local managers seem to be interested only in making profits and care less about the welfare and progress of the players. “A large number of players who go on trials abroad might have succeeded if the local managers had accompanied them to the trials and provided them with the needed guidance”, he told the press in an interview.

Bahner and I share the same view that until this trend is changed, a large number of Ghanaian players would continue to fail on the international market and this would see the decline of the nation’s progress in the game. On behalf of my associate, the venerable Bahner, may I reiterate the appeal to the Ghana Football Association to initiate measures to regulate the activities of local players’ managers in the country because the nation has already lost a lot of talented players as a result of poor management.

It is good to hear that The Red Bull Academy is ready to provide their students with the best of training to meet international standards. It is also reassuring that the Academy says it is not only interested in grooming players for the international market but to serve as a feeding ground for the various national teams. Splendid!

Bahner’s prediction that players from the Red Bull Academy would soon dominate the local and international scene because they were being given the best of technical guidance should ordinarily be good news for the nation but I can assure Bahner that surprisingly not everybody cares about the national interest. He should therefore not be surprised if some faceless individuals try to sabotage the Academy’s efforts with all kinds of treacherous and clandestine moves.

With decades of my close association with football organization in Ghana, I can say with some amount of authority that when it comes to the transfer of players abroad and the selection of players for the national youth teams some people can be extremely vicious. That is unfortunately the ugly side of football organization in Ghana, but this should in no way discourage Red Bull Academy from pursuing their lofty plans to lift the image of Ghana football.

As the pundits say it is all in the game. Cheers and keep loving sports.